Correspondence Austin Long Dinshaw Mistry Going Nowhere Fast: Bruce M

Correspondence: Going Nowhere Fast Correspondence Austin Long Dinshaw Mistry Going Nowhere Fast: Bruce M. Sugden Assessing Concerns about Long-Range Conventional Ballistic Missiles To the Editors (Austin Long writes): In his article, Bruce Sugden provides a cogent, technically sophisticated assessment of the use of conventional ballistic missiles (CBMs) for the Prompt Global Strike (PGS) mission.1 To a large degree, however, the article elides one of the central issues in targeting, the “actionable intelligence” problem. Without actionable intelligence, CBMs will be of little use, so understanding the problems and prospects for acquiring such intelligence is central to evaluating their utility. In this letter, I critique the depiction of intelligence in Sugden’s article and provide additional information on the collection of actionable intelligence against the near-term target set, which Sugden describes as “emerging, time-sensitive, soft targets, such as exposed WMD [weapons of mass destruction] launchers, terrorist leaders, and sites of state transfers of WMD to terror- ists or other states” (p. 117). I conclude by arguing that developing actionable intelligence on these targets is time consuming and requires the presence of U.S. assets, making both the prompt and global aspect of CBMs irrelevant. deªning actionable intelligence Actionable intelligence against a near-term target set must have four qualities: precision, reliability, timeliness, and comprehensiveness. Precise intelligence for a conventional weapon requires a speciªc geolocation to ensure the destruction of the target and to limit collateral damage. Precision is critical because even a large conventional explosive payload will have a relatively limited lethal radius. For example, the U.S. Army’s tactical ballistic missile, known as the ATACM, has a 560-kilogram warhead that dispenses submunitions designed to destroy soft targets over an area roughly 180 meters by 180 meters.2 To have high conªdence that a similar warhead would be effec- Austin Long is Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a member of Columbia’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He thanks Brendan Green, Robert Jervis, Joshua Rovner, Jack Snyder, and Caitlin Talmadge for helpful comments. Dinshaw Mistry is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Bruce M. Sugden is a defense analyst based in Washington, D.C. This letter reºects the views of the author and does not represent the positions of his employer or clients. For their valuable insights, the author thanks Robert Angevine, Jason Aquino, Jeffrey Engstrom, Andrew Herr, Zachary Mears, Timothy Miller, Megan Sullivan, and Frank Wolf. 1. Bruce M. Sugden, “Speed Kills: Analyzing the Deployment of Conventional Ballistic Missiles,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009), pp. 113–146. Subsequent references to this article appear parenthetically in the text. 2. See Henry Rogers, “Army Tactical Missile System and Fixed-Wing Aircraft Capabilities in the Joint Time-Sensitive Targeting Process,” M.S. thesis, Army Command and General Staff College, 2006, p. 11. International Security, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring 2010), pp. 166–184 © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 166 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2010.34.4.166 by guest on 28 September 2021 Correspondence: Going Nowhere Fast 167 tive in destroying the target of a CBM, the target would have to be located within an area of similar, if perhaps slightly larger, dimensions. A large warhead assumes, however, that collateral damage is not an issue. If the target were located in an area of high population density, such a warhead would kill doz- ens. If a smaller warhead were used to limit collateral damage, the target must be located more precisely. The intelligence must be reliable, in the sense of being both ac- curate and trustworthy, for similar reasons. If the intelligence is unreliable, one runs the risk of inºicting collateral damage and potentially provoking a major diplomatic in- cident. Unreliable intelligence is also wasteful (with each CBM costing tens of millions of dollars) and potentially alerts the target, which, if mobile, can then alter its behavior to make future targeting more difªcult. Intelligence that is timely must be received, processed, and transmitted quickly enough that the weapon can arrive before the target location changes. It does not have to be instantaneous and can even be predictive, rather than describing the target’s cur- rent location. One could imagine reliable intelligence that a target will be arriving at a certain location at a certain time. The intelligence would have to be very reliable, however, for planners to launch a weapon without conªrmation of that target’s actual presence, particularly if there were risk of collateral damage. The collateral damage issue also indicates the need for comprehensive intelligence, in the sense of placing a target in context. Without comprehensive intelligence, policy- makers may be unable to determine whether destroying a target is worthwhile. Is terrorist leader X important enough to merit striking with a CBM? What would be the second-order consequences of striking terrorist Y, who is driving a truck loaded with anthrax? Even with comprehensive intelligence, calculating the costs and beneªts of striking a target will take time, the length of which is essentially irreducible, as it requires debate and thought at the highest levels of government. The decisionmak- ing process could potentially be so long that even near-instantaneous, highly reliable, and extraordinarily precise intelligence coupled to a CBM might not be suf- ªciently fast. limitations of intelligence collection and targeting Sugden argues “that a myriad of intelligence collection sensors and sources will period- ically provide the timely and detailed information required for successful execution of a PGS mission” (p. 123). He then brieºy describes these modes of collection, including imagery satellites, radar satellites, aircraft, human intelligence, and signals intelligence. He concludes with a discussion of U.S. success in tracking terrorist targets. Closer examination reveals a host of problems with intelligence collection against the near-term target set for CBMs. Sugden himself notes that imagery and radar satellites are not persistent and are of limited utility against individuals or targets such as single trucks, which “can avoid open areas and employ cover and concealment to reduce the probability of detection” (ibid.). Human intelligence is more useful, but as he notes, it is often unreliable or unavailable. Further, even when human intelligence is avail- able, it may not be timely or precise. Sugden cites two unsuccessful attempts to kill Saddam Hussein based on human intelligence. He rightly notes that unmanned ae- rial vehicles (UAVs) offer a key way to gain intelligence, as they can carry full-motion video, signals intelligence, and other sensors (pp. 123–124). Combined with other intelligence, UAVs can provide an excellent means of locating and targeting the near-term target set. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2010.34.4.166 by guest on 28 September 2021 International Security 34:4 168 If the United States can dispatch a UAV to the area, however, the need for PGS is nonexistent because the UAV can destroy the target. Indeed, the United States began its Predator UAV program to target Osama bin Laden before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.3 In the 2002 Yemen example that Sugden cites, a Predator following a car carrying six al-Qaida associates launched a Hellªre missile, destroying the vehicle and killing the occupants (p. 124). Strikes by U.S. UAVs against militant leaders have been ongoing in Pakistan for several years, most notably in the August 2009 killing of Terik-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsud in Waziristan. According to news re- ports, the use of UAVs is supported by additional intelligence collection on the ground in Pakistan in cooperation with the government of Pakistan.4 UAVs will not always be able to operate in a particular area, for a variety of reasons. Sugden therefore argues that U.S. signals intelligence “could compensate for shortfalls in other areas of intelligence collection” (ibid.). He then describes the killing of a target in Somalia using Tomahawk cruise missiles, attributing it to “signals intelligence and other collection tools” (ibid.). There is little detail on what this means, but the New York Times article that Sugden cites makes clear that gaining the actionable intelligence required tracking the target for weeks, hardly a ºeeting target of opportunity identiªed from a single communications intercept.5 Another example provides even greater detail on how such manhunts work. It de- picts the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaida ªgure, in Pakistan. The hunt began when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station in Islamabad learned in February 2002 that he was in Lahore or Faisalabad. The intelligence community then used direction-ªnding techniques against his cellphone number: “Armed with Abu Zubaydah’s cellphone number, eavesdropping specialists deployed what some called the ‘magic box,’ an electronic scanner that could track any switched-on mobile phone

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